Arrived America!

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After our 8 hour flight on British Airways, we finally arrived in the U.S.! We rented a car and drove to Cecilia's sister's house. Ann and her husband Steve got married last July and now live in Ashburn, Virginia, a sprawling suburb about 45 minutes outside of Washington DC. We used to live in Sterling, Virginia (next to Ashburn) before we moved to Seattle in 1997. So there were many people to visit, old neighbors and coworkers, and Ramsis' brother Yaz and his wife Tamee who live in Baltimore. We had a busy few days ahead of us!

The day we arrived we had a visit from Helen and Larry (Helen was a former co-worker of Cecilia's at the college). It was great to reconnect with them...it had been at least 10 years! On Thursday, we took the Metro subway into Washington DC and the National Mall. The Mall is lined with many historical monuments and the Smithsonian Museums, all of which are free to enter. At one end of The Mall is the U.S. Capital and at the other end is the Lincoln Memorial. We decided to visit only one museum and chose the National Air & Space Museum. The museum tells the story of flight from the earliest days of balloon flight, to the sands of Kitty Hawk, to the current explorations of space. After exploring some of the museum, we attended a 3D IMAX movie on the Space Station. It was fantastic!! We felt like we were in space with the astronauts! We were all suffering from jet lag, so we made our way back to Ann's house. On Friday, we spent visiting some old friends the Broshkevitchs, Andrea and Mark (who was on Reserve duty in Norfolk) and their 3 kids Cara, Anna, and Adam. Cara and Noah were good friends from the age of 3 months until we moved when Noah was 2 years old. It was interesting to watch Noah and Cara interact now that they are 12!! Much different to when they played in the sandbox together! On our way home, we stopped by Becky Groff's house to visit with her (another of Cecilia's college coworker). She was just the same as I remember her, full of energy!!

On Saturday we had a slow day...kind of. We spent the day with Ann and Steve and went to another part of the Air and Space Museum, closer to their home, the Udvar-Hezy Air and Space Museum. It is a relatively new annex to the National Air and Space Museum. A very large hangar houses airplanes of all kinds from various eras, including the Space Shuttle Enterprise, SR-71 Blackbird, and the Concord supersonic jet. There was also the Pegasus rocket, a project Ramsis worked on when he worked for Orbital Sciences.

Sunday we headed to Baltimore to visit Ramsis' brother Eyassu and his pregnant wife Tamee. They had just moved into their new home the day before. Yaz hasn't changed a bit and the kids had a lot of fun playing with him. Tamee gave Noah one of her old cameras, which he was thrilled to receive and she gave Hannah and Grace a purse each....they felt so grown up! Then we made our way back to WCD to see The White House and Lincoln Memorial before meeting more friends at Meskerem, an Ethiopian restaurant in Adams Morgan. This is the location that Ramsis and I met in 1987...20 years ago!!

On Monday, we loaded up into the car and drove down to Greensboro, North Carolina to visit with Ramsis' family. He expected to see his little sister Lily and she was there, but to our surprise, his older sister Azeb and her son Phil were also there. It was a wonderful week of Ethiopian food, hanging out at the pool, playing tennis and catching up with Mom and Dad. They looked fantastic!

We stayed in North Carolina until Saturday and flew out early in the morning to head to Indiana, where we will spend the week of the 4th of July visiting Cecilia's family.

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